The
explosions on the India-to-Pakistan passenger
train late Feb. 18, 2004 were caused by timed
incendiary devices (TIDs), rather than by much more commonly used improvised
explosive devices (IEDs). Although this appears to be the first TID attack
against India's rail system, the technology in these timers is not new.
German army plotters, for example, used a similar device in an attempt
to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Furthermore, similar attacks
using TIDs were attempted on trains traveling in western Germany in August
2006, though the devices failed to ignite. Four people were taken into
custody in Lebanon and Germany in connection with the potentially devastating
plot. Although the attack in Germany failed, this latest firebombing sets
a potentially dangerous precedent, especially since TIDs can be more easily
constructed -- and with more readily available materials -- than more complex
high-explosive IEDs.

Lashkar-e- Taiba
was the first organization to carry out suicide attacks in Kashmir. It
claimed to have carried out more than fifty suicide missions against security
forces, while the Jaish-i-Mohammed, which followed its example, was supposedly
responsible for thirty such missions since 2001.( Azmat Abbas, "The Making
of a Militant;' Herald (Karachi), July 2003, p. 58).

Although it
has changed its name, Lashkar-e- Taiba has remained a prominent jihadi
organization of Ahl-e-Hadith persuasion. There are differences among and
within Islam's two schools of thought on the meaning, purpose, and means
of carrying out jihad. Many organizations of the Ahl-e-Hadith sect support
only "greater jihad:' which calls for self-purification. They consider
militant jihad a "lesser" struggle, which, in the case of Kashmir , can
only be justified if "the oppression of the Kashmiri people will be alleviated
and an Islamic state will be established there .... However, when it is
evident to any sensible person that our struggle will not yield the above
results, why should we waste our resources and energy there?" (Abu
Fattada, "Open the Lock with the Key;' Siratul Mustaqeem, June 1995, p.
22).

At the other
end of the spectrum is Jamaat-al-Dawa and its military wing, Lashkar-e-
Taiba, which considers militant jihad "absolutely obligatory:' It vows
to do jihad until certain objectives are achieved:Muslims should
fight as long as a dispute persists; it is obligatory for Muslims to fight
till Allah's kingdom is established in the world; and till they finish
all governments by infidels and extract jeziya [tax] from them; if oppression
is going on in any part of the world, Muslims should fight it till it is
removed; if any infidel kills a Muslim, we should fight to avenge it; if
any nation perpetrates a breach of contract against Muslims, it is obligatory
to fight with that nation; when any nation takes an aggressive posture
on Muslims, we should fight in self-defense; if the infidels encroach upon
any part of a Muslim land, it is obligatory to fight them and restore it.
The last point identifies such lands that must be reclaimed. It includes
Andalusia ( Spain ), Palestine and the whole of India (including Kashmir,
Hyderabad , Assam , Bihar, Junagarh), and Nepal and Burma . It also mentions
other countries such as Bulgaria , Hungary , Sicily , Russian Turkistan,
and Chinese Turkistan. Abdul Salam bin Mohammad, Why We Do Jihad? (Department
of Communication and Publications of AI-Dawa, May 1999).

Nonetheless,
dominant jihadi organizations of both schools of thought practice militant
jihad and share a pan-Islamic agenda, which has shaped their political
discourse. The proponents of a transnational Islamic identity define the
millat as the world's entire Muslim population. Their self-professed goal
is to establish a grand Islamic state stretching across the Middle East,
Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, similar to the
Islamic Caliphate of medieval times. (Riyaz Punjabi, "The Concept of Islamic
Caliphate: The Religious and Ethnic Pulls of Kashmir Militant Movement;'
United Kashmir Journal, May-June 1994, p. 2).

The Harkat-ul-Jihad
Islami manifesto, for instance, states that "the prime purpose of this
Jamaat is dominance of Islam all over the world . . . . [W] e will never
rest content until we attain a threefold objective: freedom of all occupied
Muslim areas, complete protection of all Muslim minorities and the regaining
ofIslamic glory:' It offers to serve as "a second line of defence of each
Muslim country."A political pamphlet of Harkat-ul-Ansar (n.d.). See also
Kamran Khan, "Harkatul-Ansar: Pakistan 's Islamist Commandos Engaged in
jihad Worldwide," News ( Lahore ), February 13, 1995. According to Abu
Jindal, a Harkat-ul-Ansar member apprehended by the army at Charar-i-Sharif,
"Jihad means to kill all those who are not Muslims. Only Muslims who practice
the religion truly should live, [and the] rest [of] all the people should
be put to death." An army officer's conversation with Abu Jindal as told
to the author. See also his interview in Kashmir Times, May 17, 1995.

As more and
more mujahideen became available from the Afghan front, the armed struggle
in Kashmir became just one stage of a wider, indeed global, jihad. Kashmir
is not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan , not even a clash
between cultures, but nothing less than a war between two different and
mutually opposed ideologies: Islam and kufr (disbelief). On one hand, Muslims
of this persuasion dismiss any attempt to apply a statist paradigm to Kashmir
's realities. On the other hand, Geelani and others have argued that Muslims
cannot live harmoniously with Hindus without their own religion and traditions
coming under a grave threat, thereby necessitating the separation of Kashmir
from India . He stops short of following the rational corollary of his
argument-that Indian Muslims cannot live as citizens of secular India either.
For Lashkar's spiritual head, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, separation is essential
because "the Hindus have no compassion in their religion." Or as an interview
in Kashmir Times, May 17, 1995 demonstrates: "Jihad means to kill all those
who are not Muslims. Only Muslims who practice the religion truly should
live, [and the] rest [of] all the people should be put to death."

Hence it is
the duty of Muslims to wage jihad against the "Hindu oppressors." Saeed
declares:"In fact, the
Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted
by our forefathers ... who crushed them by force. We need to do the same.".The
old idea of a "Hindu-Muslim divide" thus stands revived. With the
induction of Pakistan-based jihadi organizations, the Kashmiri component-its
cadre, ideology, and political goals-became eclipsed. For them, the Kashmiris'
independence struggle and the right of self-determination are irrelevant.
The slogan that Kashmiris should decide the future of Kashmir has given
rise to an evil, which was distorting the Islamic identity of the present
movement and reducing it to a mere democratic movement. From [the] Islamic
viewpoint, the people's opinion has no importance. God and the Prophet's
(Peace Be upon Him) law is the supreme one and should be obeyed. Barring
this, no group and no individual can decide everything.(Daily Srinagar
Times, August 30,1993).

Lashkar's Saeed
concurred: "The notion of the sovereignty of the people is anti- Islamic.
Only Allah is sovereign." Its slogan, "Jamhhoriat ka jawab, grenade aur
blast" (Demands for democracy will be met by grenades and bomb blasts),
captured this worldview. (Cited in Praveen Swami, "Terrorism: A Widening
Network;' Frontline, January 3, 2003, p. 35).

Kashmiriyat
was debunked because Islam does not recognize territorial nationalism,
arguing that the only real ideology is the ideology of the Islamic Caliphate,
transcending race, gender, and territorial boundaries. (Statement by Tehrik-e-Khilafat-e-Islamia
,The Movement for Islamic Caliphate, in Punjabi, "The Concept of Islamic
Caliphate;' p. 4).

The key militant
groups also split along a new dividing line, that of Kashmiri versus non-Kashmiri
cadre and leadership. Yasin Malik refused to play second fiddle to Azad
Kashmir's leadership of the JKLF and in 1995 parted ways with Amanullah
Khan, asserting that the "movement cannot be run by remote control as Khan
was doing" from Azad Kashmir. (See Yasin Malik's interview with Ramesh
Vinayak in India Today, October 15, 1995, p. 80).

Seven years
later, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen met the same fate when the Pakistani-based leadership
decided to expel Abdul Majid Dar and other Valley-based commanders (Zafar
Abdul Fateh and Asad Yazdani) for favoring a dialogue with the Indian government.
The bulk of the midlevel command in the Hizb-ulMujahideen's south and central
Kashmir divisions threw their weight behind the expelled leader. Zafar
Fateh remarked: "Hizb is not anybody's handmaiden .... Those who are sitting
across [Pakistan-occupied Kashmir] cannot claim to be representatives of
Kashmir and the organization as they have no understanding of the ground
situation."(Indian Express ( New Delhi ), May 6, 2002).

Another Hizbulleader,
Sayedani, also admitted that militant groups such as Lashkar-e- Taiba (hence
called LeT), Jaish-i-Mohammed, and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen should work under
local groups as "they have no role in the policy-making of militants."
(Times of India ( New Delhi ), November 23, 2001).

Certainly a
culmination for the LeT was the December 2001 attack at the Parliament
building in New Delhi . At least up to that point, the LeT was known to
have a well-established and military-like structure, with the above mentioned
Saeed as its "emir," or supreme commander. The top policymaking body included
the emir and his deputies, a finance chief and others with executive functions,
while authority at the field level was distributed from chief commander
to divisional commanders, district commanders, battalion commanders and
so forth.

The organization's
physical infrastructure was said to be considerable: a 200-acre headquarters
compound at Muridke (near Lahore) comprising a fish farm, a market, a hospital,
madrassas and other facilities. The LeT operated several media mouthpieces,
a Web site and various monthly and weekly publications written in Urdu,
Arabic and English. It also ran schools and health services (such as blood
banks and mobile clinics) in Pakistan , with a network of branch offices
to collect donations and provide other forms of support.

However comfortable
and well-documented the leadership and decision-making processes may have
been at one point, the LeT underwent a drastic change after the 2001 Parliament
attack. In that strike, which was similar to an assault at the Kashmir
state assembly in Srinagar, just two months before, gunmen wearing military
fatigues, who apparently had used a fake identity sticker to get past security
checkpoints, broke into the area before the government building while the
legislative body was in session. One of the attackers, with explosives
strapped to his body, blew himself up; the other four were killed in the
protracted gun battle that ensued. Six policemen and a gardener also were
killed.

Under pressure
from the United States and Britain , both of which quickly labeled the
LeT a terrorist organization, Islamabad reinvented its relationship with
the organization. The ISI severed direct links with the group, which began
to splinter into more autonomous groups operating under several names (Lashkar-e-Qahar,
al-Arifeen, al-Mansoorain, Al-Nasireen and Al-Qanoon, for example). With
the post-9/11 pressure from Washington and London , Islamabad had no choice
but to act, but it also needed to retain the geopolitical leverage against
its nemesis, India , afforded by the militant groups. Thus, the Musharraf
regime outlawed both the LeT and MDI but allowed an MDI successor organization,
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, to exist as a "nonprofit" group that collects donations
and engages in social, cultural and humanitarian activities. MDI founder
Saeed is the leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and the organization has taken over,
and expanded on, many of the social services previously offered by LeT.

Ideologically
Musharraf made an effort to gain legitimacy for the concept of jihad by
distinguishing between jihad from terrorism, and justifying the former
as a legitimate instrument of the Kashmiris' freedom struggle. He told
Prime Minister Vajpayee, "You do not expect me to accept cross-border terrorism.
This is wrong. There is nothing going on across the border, it is a Line
of Control and also there is no terrorism, there is a freedom struggle
going on there." (President Musharraf, interview with Malini Parthsarthy,
Hindu, Chennai, April 1,2002).

In fact until
Musharraf's
peace moves in 2006, the fundamental
pillars of the Pakistan Governemt's Kashmir strategy did not change,
as was evident from the Musharraf regime's response to India 's total
deployment of its forces on the border, in the wake of the Kaluchak massacre
in May 2002 and the resulting military crisis. Musharraf was "absolutely
confident' that the freedom struggle in Kashmir [had] entered a crucial
phase where an Indian q1ilitary adventurism acros the Line-of-Control would
trap the Indian army in a Vietnam or Afghanistan-like situation and hasten
the freedom process for the Kashmiri Muslims." The Pakistani army had concluded
that the military posturing by India might actually push it into a deeper
strategic quagmire in Kashmir . And;We are not only on the defensive. We'll
take the offensive into Indian territory .... At the moment, if there is
anything that they do across the Line of Control, there are thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people in Kashmir, Azad Kashmir, our part of Kashmir
, who are demanding to be armed .... [and] who are telling me ... [start],
we will take Kashmir. (Quoted from "Musharraf: 'There Is Nothing Happening
on the Line of Control,' Washington Post, May 25, 2002 ).

Furthermore
after the LeT, changed its name it actively attempted to create the impression
that it has splintered -- into a number of smaller groups that appear to
operate with great autonomy and to use a variety of names, likely in efforts
to keep security authorities confused. Though it is possible that special
cells within the ISI still dispatch liaisons on occasion to have tea with
"former" LeT operatives and "suggest" future operations, the net effect
of the changes was to drive the militant organization underground and make
its financial and organizational links to Islamabad much harder to trace.
(The Musharraf government does, however, retain enough contact with LeT-linked
figures to suit the political needs of the moment. For instance, to offset
political pressure following the July 11 bombings, officials placed Saeed
under house arrest in August, only to free him again in mid-October.)

Like other Islamist
militant groups, LeT is thought to fund its activities through a variety
of sources, including charitable organizations scattered through the Muslim
world and hawala exchanges. There have been suspicions that its networks
spread into the West: In the United States, 11 men convicted on federal
charges,who have become known as the "Virginia Jihad Network"--were thought
to have trained in LeT camps in preparation for waging war against India
. And several of the suspects arrested by British authorities following
the Aug. 10 disruption of a plot involving transatlantic airline flights
were Pakistani nationals thought to have ties to LeT.

The criminal
underworld may provide significant sources of financing for the LeT as
well. A prominent Indian mobster, Dawood Ibrahim, is believed to have planned
the group's March 12, 1993, attacks in Mumbai. In those strikes, which
claimed 247 lives, making them the most deadly terrorist attacks in Indian
history, more than a dozen improvised explosive devices and grenades exploded
at the city's stock exchange, several hotels, markets, an airport and other
targets.

Thus even today,
LeT is widely networked. Members of the banned Students Islamic Movement
of India (SIMI), along with sympathizers in Bangladesh and elsewhere, are
believed to act as local guides and provide safe-houses for operatives
deploying from Kashmir or Pakistan . Bangladesh ,where the government for
the most part turns a blind eye to the activities of Islamist militant
groups, may well serve as a safe-haven. LeT operatives likely mask their
meetings with authorities in Pakistan by routing their travel from India
through Bangladesh or sneaking across the border to Nepal , and thence
to Kashmir or other key locales.

Significantly,
LeT's strategic goals overlap with those of al Qaeda in many ways, and
today, the group shares al Qaeda's beliefs in a radical strain of Wahhabi/Salafi
ideology. Bin Laden clearly has placed India in al Qaeda's targeting scopes,
having espoused the cause of Kashmiri Muslims and referring in an April
2006 recording to the "Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims." Moreover,
the subcontinent is a strategic linchpin in the grand U.S. geopolitical
strategy (used as a lever for containing China ), and its economy has become
linked to that of the United States in significant ways. From bin Laden's
standpoint, the financial centers in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore constitute
politically and economically meaningful targets, within convenient striking
distance. Only days after the train bombings, al Qaeda claimed to have
established itself in Jammu and Kashmir , a claim the Indian government
deemed credible, and it is known to have been actively recruiting among
Kashmiri groups formerly controlled by Islamabad .

But to say that
the LeT is controlled by al Qaeda, or even learning most of its current
tactics from it, might be going too far. To be fair, both groups seem to
have learned from each other over time: LeT's use of government decals
to slip past security in the 2001 Parliament attack, for example, far predates
the use of similar tactics by al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. The multiple
target strikes in the 1993 Mumbai attacks also serve as a precedent.

Historically,
the LeT has struck the same types of targets al Qaeda has chosen in its
war against the United States : government sites, economic symbols (as
signified by the Mumbai Stock Exchange hit) and transportation systems,
as well as "soft targets" like cinemas and places of worship. However,
unlike al Qaeda, the LeT and its successor groups thus far have shown little
interest in striking directly at the West. Rather, they seem particularly
focused on fighting India 's Hindu majority, stirring up sectarian strife
and reprisal attacks in hopes of producing high body counts and weakening
the government in New Delhi .

When it split
in 2003, The Hurriyat Conference became fragmented as well. When it split
in 2003, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq demanded that, the Muzaffarabad-based conglomeration
of militant groups, should stop interfering in the Hurriyat's affairs.
(Praveen Swami, "Danger Signals from the Valley;'Frontline, September 20October
10, 2003, p. 35). Abdul Ghani Bhat, former Hurriyat chairman, fumed: "We
never thought a symbol of political unity would be broken up by its mentor."
He told a team of Pakistani journalists visiting Srinagar in November 2004
that he had torn up an earlier will in which he had expressed a desire
to be buried in Pakistan. (Rehana Hakim, "Kashmir's Endless Autumn;' Newsline
(Karachi), November 2004, p. 50).

Showing the
administrative vacuum in the part of Pakistan where the famous 2005 Azad
Kashmir earthquake hit, it was not the Pakistani Armies or/and Governement
but the Azad Lashkar-e- Taiba; operating under the name Jamaat-al-Dawa,
that spearheaded the rescue and relief effort-- removing the debris from
collapsed buildings and providing first aid to the injured within two hours
of the earthquake: